


Truth's Day Star

by perdiccas



Category: Justified
Genre: Community: nvrleaveharlan, Domestic Violence, Dreams, F/M, Hillbilly Remix, Masturbation, Pre-Canon, Showers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:48:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ava has nothing, she still has her dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth's Day Star

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Leave the lights on. Keep talking.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/446652) by [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah). 



> Written for the nvrleaveharlan Hillbilly Remix Exchange, based on two lines from [Leave the lights on. Keep talking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/446652) by norgbelulah: _Ava dreams of Raylan sometimes, the way she dreams of dead relatives and fourth grade classmates. She dreams him in wheat fields and on darkened, deserted roadsides, blank-faced, waiting._
> 
> Thanks to someotherstorm for beta reading and to norgbelulah for organizing this remix! Title from ‘A Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe.

Ava dreams of Raylan sometimes, the way she dreams of dead relatives and fourth grade classmates. She dreams him in wheat fields and on darkened, deserted roadsides, blank-faced, waiting. And when she wakes, it’s Raylan who lingers with her. Her girlhood memories fill in details that have been elided by sleep –the sound of his voice and the tilt of his smile, the coal dust blackening his nails. His presence settles as warm in her mind as the early morning sunshine on her face. In those secret hours when the house is quiet and her life almost feels her own, she wonders what if.

Under the anaemic pulse of the shower she wonders if he’s still so lean and if his hands are still so broad. She pictures those broad hands on her body, trailing smears of dark and grit, traversing across her dampened skin. In the pitter-patter of the water, she feels a thousand teasing touches. Each droplet becomes a fingertip’s feather-light caress. Between the spaces where the warming water falls, the air still holds the past night’s chill; Ava feels her nipples tighten as they begin to peak. Water arcs down her chest, moulding its path to shape of her breasts. Ava’s – Raylan’s – touch follows suit. And when she feels a heat begin to throb in her core, she presses her legs together, shallow puddles pooling at the apex of her thighs.

Ava twists around until the water thrums on her shoulders, and the battered-blue bruises that litter her back. She closes her eyes and lets Raylan soothe her where she hurts. It’s funny how Bowman’s hand only ever gets harsher, the softer he grows around his middle. While Raylan, he ain’t never been nothing but a mess of sharp angles, and his skin, she thinks, would be rough from too many hours, handling too many guns, but his touch... His touch would always be gentle. Of that, she’s sure.

And as she stands with her back to the faucet, sheets of water skating over the rise of her behind and dampening the backs of thighs, Ava imagines a Raylan older than the boy she knew. She glides soap over her hips, feeling a supple give in the places where her body curves and falls. When she smoothes her palms over the swell of her rear, it’s Raylan she feels tucked in close and desperate behind her. She wonders then, if he’s grown into the kind of man who enjoys a woman on her stomach as much as on her back. She wonders if that’s the kind of thing a man could ask of a woman in Miami. Her fingers are long like Raylan’s but they’re slim and they’re delicate and even still when she slips them between her buttocks, she thinks that if he asked her, she’d be the kind of woman who would say yes.

While the shower spray runs cold, Ava leans against the wall, waiting for her heart to slow and her legs to steady.

In the kitchen, she hums a tuneless melody, barefoot and with her skin still flushed. She fixes breakfast fit for an army, biscuits and slabs of ham, scrambled eggs and crispy bacon, looking to fill a hunger of a different kind without knowing how.

Bowman stumbles in. He’s hung over, always meaner the morning after than he was night before. “Ava? Goddammit, woman,” he growls, “what the hell are you thinking – if you’re thinking at all? You know I like my eggs sunny side up.”

With the back of Bowman’s hand, Raylan fades, like the barest summer breeze dissipating in the stifling Harlan heat.

 

The night that Bowman hits her hard enough to knock her clear into the stove, Ava dreams of nothing.

She spends the night on the living room sofa, unwilling to share Bowman’s bed even in his absence. She remembers back when they were newlyweds and she still believed his words: he’s real sorry, he didn’t mean to, he just has a temper, is all, and if only she didn’t make him so mad. She used to think it meant something, the way he would never stay the night when things got bad. She thought it meant he couldn’t stand to see her all bruised up and know he was the one who did it. Ava knows better now. The only thing it means when Bowman’s gone is that he’s with his creepy brother getting drunk.

She closes her eyes but sleep is just an ever widening expanse of solitude, now. Gone are Raylan’s touches and the promise of a better life that never comes. Bowman, she thinks, has finally gone and done it. He’s smacked her dreams right out of her. Through the ache in her head and the blood on her nightdress, and the memory of the baby she’d lost, what Ava hates most is knowing she ever let Bowman make her cry.

In the morning, she puts on her face and does her hair, and loads a round in Bowman’s rifle.


End file.
